Falta Leche

Steve and I had an awesome time in the mountains…again. Hard not to do when we head out together. But as far as the rams go, every one of them is still alive. It’s not very often the white rams are within shooting distance of Scott and Steve and they get to walk away.

Here’s the short version of the story. We started off the trip soaking wet after hiking all day in the pouring rain and set up camp late in the evening shivering like a couple hypo boys. Luckily day #2 was a nice one and we got to dry out our clothes. After glassing around from a distance that day, we had a lot of rams to look over and knew we had three bigger rams in the area.

There were also some plans to head further into the glaciated country if needed. But mother nature decided to foil the plans. The evening before the opener, we had thick fog roll in and set up camp with us. For the next three days we basically had 15 yard visibility. Every once in a while, we’d get a break, and we’d get after hunting, but the breaks were short lived which several times had us within range of rams but unable to see more than shadows in the mist. One time we had an ambush set up, rams were coming down the mountain at 450yrds, and the lead ram looked good. Then, in just a few seconds, the fog engulfed us and we watched shapes float past us at 50yrds! Here's a view of what it looked like...

It was frustrating, but finally we got it figured out, and hunted hard to get ourselves in position on all three rams the last couple days. We snuck within 200-300 yards of each of them and spent hours on each ram checking all the details with the Leica Spotting Scope. Turns out each of them were Falta Leche (Spanish for short milk). They were just shy of full curl and almost identical as 15/16 curls and 7 years old. Try as we might, we just couldn’t make them legal. And to top it off, our plans to go further back were cut short by the fact that we no longer had time. So we had to hike out of there with empty packs. We don’t get much credit or glory for this story, but we’re pretty proud that we were able to be the sheep hunters that we’ve been telling other sheep hunters to be for years… "let those marginal rams go and grow another year." Other fun stories are hiking knife ridges, mountain goats at 3 yards, and hearing God say “move your tent for tonight” just before a wind storm hit! The bummer is Steve is done for the year as he had to head back home to Prince of Whales Island. I’m still hoping for a chance at some weekend spots as we still have lots of sheep season left. I’ll keep you posted.